Obama and the Black Hole Son

As sleep began to gain the upper hand last night, my mind was carried aloft by that classic party-stopper, “how can a Christian vote for someone who is pro-abortion?” As has more than once in my world proven the case, this is an issue with which we Christian folk think and communicate with an incredible amount of zeal. And not without reason!

If you made it past the word “abortion,” allow me to posit a wider, perhaps more refined way of thinking about not only politics, but our entire world.

I dredged up Col. 1:15-17 for you so you wouldn’t have to look it up:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together

We sell God’s creation short when we settle for simple explanations of God’s role in the issues of our day, ones that easily surrender to talk of where God isn’t or even can’t be.

As you think about that, let me toss this your way: what if one were to say, based on the famous passage in Leviticus 18, that the entire Bible is about human sexuality and right relations betwixt the genders? Or that the entire Bill of Rights was about the importance of the Third Amendment, which can be used as a check on the power of the federal government’s ability to interfere in citizens’ private affairs and property? Would not either of those perspectives do extraordinary violence to the content, the history, the origins, the authors, etc. associated with those works?

Both of those situations above (which, if you’ll allow your mind just the barest liberty, you’ll no doubt see scenarios in which people would argue those perspectives very well) are what I would call an “adventure in missing the point”.¹

As we discuss “the point” as Christians, we find ourselves in an interesting quandry. Revisit the wideness of the language used above in Colossians: phrases like “all things,” “all creation” and that list comprised of “heavenly things…” to “… earthly authorities.” Surely you won’t object to my saying that Paul meant this list to be exhaustive!

So then, what is “the point”?

Guess what: no answer here.

Here’s what I will tell you though. If in fact all of this high and exalted language of Christ is true, if indeed he is in, before, transcendent and in the midst of “all things,” then such a figure as our exalted Savior in all his transcendent glory should be as frequent an informer as possible to the world of the Christian. In the very midst of the realities of the dirty and the pure, the complex and the simple, the amenable and the lamentable alike, we should seek out and apply that depth, majesty and wisdom.

So then, when we presume to have the “Christian perspective” on something, or to speak “as a representative of Christianity,” let’s make sure we’re taking into account the majesty, the awesomeness, and “all-ness” of Christ. Let’s make sure we aren’t settling for something that isn’t real.

Let’s err on the side of humility.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just not smart enough, holy enough, wise enough, or familiar enough with the Scriptures to say with confidence which candidate, and for what reasons, God is “for” or “against”.

If what Colossians says of Him is true, then I’ll bet He’s got a way to make one vote count for both anyway.

1 I actually first heard this phrase as the title of a McLaren book; haven’t read it.

Deliver us, O Lord

With this post, I am simply adding to the swirls of hot, vapid e-air that circulate our e-planet these days.

Yet today my goat was gotten such that it felt appropriate.

I found it tough to complete this story this morning without getting too worked up. You see, something dark has happened to America under Bush. Me and those in my profession might end up holding the blame, I don’t know-time will tell, but it isn’t really complicated.

It is usually at this point in these sorts of discussions that my Christian faith gets called into question… or the facts of the Iraq War, whichever prove more damning witnesses to my viewpoint. (Notice: Christian faith or matters of history-of equal value for character assassination!)

So I won’t speak to any of that, as you likely wouldn’t listen anyway.

If you’ll keep reading, though, I’ll share a story with you. However fact challenged or politically myopic you might be, perhaps this will rouse you to think a little more about our world and your faith.

I was talking to two former students today at the school where I teach, both two of the very sharpest in their 9th grade class (no correlation there, obviously).

At random, one of the girls asked me, “Hey, are you Obama?!?” [in obvious reference to the Obama bumper sticker I sport these days.]

“Yup,” went my weary mumble as I attacked my pre-Finals-grading salad.

The look of bumfuzzlement was classic that this incredibly bright girl and her friend shared, such that I don’t remember what her exact rejoinder was. I’m sure some standard interrogative to the effect of, ‘why,’ ‘how,’ or even ‘how could you!?!’.

I’ll save the bulk of the conversation for the Whammo! Special Edition DVD version and skip to why you care.

She asked me why I didn’t support McCain, which I thought was a fair enough question. I don’t get that one often, to be honest. As I’ve shared before, though, for me all things come back to the Iraq War. So, I told this girl that I did not support the war (her friend’s eyes got as round as a donut at this point) from its genesis (eyes to about the size of the face of my watch) but of course support the troops now (back to skeptical but otherwise almond-sized).

“But they attacked us!”, said Interlocutor #1.

In my rush to verify what I thought I heard I stumbled over my next question, but indeed it was what I had assumed: this rising 10th grader, one of the sharpest of her class, a student of history, politics and religion at a pretty nice private Christian school (if I should say so myself), believes that a war willfully initiated by her leaders, preemptively, under false pretenses, was done so because of the terrorist actions of a rogue group based in an entirely unrelated country some 15 months prior.

The alarms weren’t quite going off in my head. This girl has a few years left with us, and then college will clear things up for her. But to be alive and roughly aware of major world events taking place (she would have been in 6th grade when the war on Iraq started), yet still hold that we attacked Iraq because they were somehow involved with 9/11… Such a rare find as that seemed something more the realm of Indiana Jones than of Mr. Parnell, and she has certainly been on my mind all day since.

We ended our conversation on a pleasant note, with her promising that she was going to ‘do some research’ and that we would have a ‘debate’ about this. I eagerly anticipate that, although I’m not really sure through what issues of fact she and I need to reason. (Either way, I told her to hunt down some sources beyond just Wikipedia.) 

With that in mind then, here is the memo that I would send to the President, Vice President and Karl Rove:

Mission Accomplished, sirs. You have successfully perpetuated a lie to multiple generations of patriotic Americans within your own lifetimes.

A legacy indeed.

Now as I was piecing this post together in my head, all I could really think of for trying to end on a note of hope was to simply say, “come Lord Jesus, come.” We pass dark times in a dark world, and the power men trade amongst themselves is still shuffled between bloodstained hands.

We have no other hope but you, Lord.

Do come soon.